Professional Feedback Round #2: "Cheetah on the Roof"

This weekend I attended the New Letters Writing Conference at UMKC as a noncredit “student”.  After having just attended both the RT Booklovers Convention and the writing panels at KC, MO’s ConquesT 44 science fiction convention, this very-much-more-structured and heavily literary conference was something of a… um… well, completely and utterly different world, lol – although it ended up being just as helpful and informational.  But I’ll get into that in another post.  The purpose of this post, specifically, is to share the feedback I received on the prologue and first chapter of “Cheetah on the Roof” (my main novel project), which I submitted (and paid an extra fee) to the writing minds running the UMKC conference for a private manuscript evaluation.

I was intensely curious to see, after editing the beginning based on the feedback I’d received from the Writer’s Digest Workshop I took in October 2012, what the next set of advice would be, and anxious to know if I had, indeed, tidied up the weak points mentioned in the previous Workshop.

My manuscript was assigned to Linda Rodriquez.  To be honest, when I realized how academically literary this conference was, I became suddenly terrified of what Linda would say during our manuscript conference, especially given that mine was a young adult fantasy and not at all following along the lines of a literary novel!

But upon sitting down with Linda, she told me that my MS was given to her because she herself writes genre fiction – mysteries to be exact.  WHEEEWWWW, lol.  I felt much better after learning that, and especially after hearing of Linda’s own publication story (which I will get to in a minute).  Then she began the review of my chapter.

Remember my post about prologues??  Well to prevent an automatic dismissal of my prologue (just in case they were inclined to do that) I just smashed it onto the beginning of my chapter one, to see if they echoed the sentiments of the literary agent who did the WD Tutorial.  I suspected, of course, the professional in the field knew what she was talking about, but I wasn’t quite ready to lose my prologue – yet.  Call this my own little experiment!  😉

Well, the first thing Linda said was that it was very good overall and very well written.

But the SECOND thing she said was that she suggested taking the first scene out and moving it somewhere else.  I didn’t have to get rid of it altogether because she liked the scene itself and thought it was a good one, but she recommended I start with Clara since she is the protagonist whom readers identify with.  She suggested moving the beginning scene with Arrelious to a later spot, wherever I thought it might fit.  (The problem with this is that it won’t chronologically work in a later spot, but I will find a way to make it fit, somehow! :P)  My initial reluctance to cut the prologue (or move it) wasn’t even because I was married to that scene, but more because I felt the beginning of the book might be a little slow and not hold reader interest.  I tried to make it move as quickly as possible, of course, but there really wasn’t much else I could tweak about Clara’s beginning to make it any more interesting, at least in my eyes.  However, Linda’s feedback on the Clara scene completely put those fears to rest.  So now I actually feel quite comfortable moving that prologue scene!  Which, I suppose, is definitely a good thing!

Other than that, in the 4400 words I submitted, there were a few very minor things that should have been totally obvious but were not, such as why was the box so heavy if the contents within were so small?  I was like, “WHOOPS!”  But this is why you need beta readers!  To catch those crazy tiny inconsistencies!  There were three instances of little things that didn’t quite add up, two issues with Arrelious I need to clear up at some point, one instance where I left Clara’s viewpoint, one instance of overkill with Clara’s reaction, and one instance of a cliché metaphor, at which point Linda said, “Judging from the rest of your writing here, I know you can come up with something better than that!” which as strange as it may sound, made me feel rather warm and fuzzy, LOL!

She also said I did a great job overall and had a strong beginning.  I grabbed reader interest immediately: “Clara’s there, the box is there, we are immediately interested.”  I gave a good sense of Clara, her mother, and even Grandma Rosemary through her letter and Clara’s memories of her.  Clara is a character readers can identify with and root for.  She liked the way I ended the first chapter, said I left readers wanting more.  Even the prologue scene, though not in the right place, had great set up, she said.  AND she said something which I think is my favorite thing of all: “You do a good job of showing rather than telling, you don’t have a lot of telling.”  To which inwardly I went –

“YEEESSSSSSS!!!!!!  MWUAHAHAHHAAHAHAAA!!!!”

That very thing is my ultimate goal in my writing at the moment, the main thing I’m trying to watch for right now.  So her saying that was great confirmation that I’m headed down the right path!  😉  And in case you were wondering, YES, I DID tidy up the weak points mentioned in the WD workshop, because she mentioned none of them!  Whoohoo!  Progress!

I also voiced concern that I only have two young adult characters in this book, and will have viewpoints from adult characters.  I asked if this would be a problem for a young adult book, and she said no.  She also informed me of something I did not know – adult fantasy novels can have younger protagonists and still be sold and marketed as adult fantasies and do very well.  THIS made me VERY happy!  She suggested, though, that I write the entire book and get it all polished up before really deciding if it was a young adult or adult book.  Her agent represents some young adult books though, so I’m going to remember that when I’m ready to start looking for agents!  Hehehe…

And on Sunday morning, whilst I was reading over chapter one of the love story and making edits, Linda found me and gave me her card and told me to just contact her if I had any other questions.  O_o   AAGGGH!!!  I am SO EXCITED about this.

During our talk, Linda also told me about her long, agonizing and painful (on many different levels) path to publication.  She is currently working on her third novel in a series.  And they gave her a whopping 10 weeks to write the first draft of this third novel.  When she said that, I thought two things: 1) Wow! I’m soooooooo glad I did NaNoWriMo 2012 and am attempting this contest with an Oct 1st deadline after all!  This is far closer to reality than most aspiring authors would care to know!  and 2) Actually now that I think about it… 10 weeks for a first draft is actually quite a lot of time!  HA.  Although I learned later she hates to give people her actual first draft, so she is probably planning to turn in draft 2 or 3 by then, which makes it more complicated.

What I took away from this story, though, and the multitudes of other stories from authors in the same boat: DON’T BE AFRAID OF DEADLINES.  If you are hoping to become a career novelist, or even a freelance writer, you’ll be staring into the maw of a lot of those, so might as well get used to them now, before you have a contract hanging over your head, too!

Needless to say, coming away from the manuscript review, I felt very much re-energized.  It was a huge confidence booster that I had no major problems in these first few scenes, as beginnings are the hardest for me to write.  I accomplished with that first chapter everything I had hoped to accomplish, and I just can’t even describe how good that feels!!!

Add that to all the great tips and tidbits I received during this conference and I am ready and rarin’ to go to work on these books, so HAPPY WRITING, EVERYONE!!!  <3

 

 

Note: More posts on the advice and tips handed out during the conference will follow… so stay tuned!